The family joke for many years was, “I’m going to make my husband sleep in a large, green plastic bag at night.” Either that or I was going to sleep in a rain coat. My husband suffered, nightly for many years from severe, drenching night sweats that would cause him to have to change his pajamas and place bath sheets in the bed in order to go back to sleep. He would awake like clockwork around 2:00 pm soaked with sweat from his damp head down to his soggy toes.
For many years we pursued answers from doctors, none of them had a remedy. Oftentimes, when we would describe this annoying dilemma they would stare back at us blankly and say something like, “Gee…I’ve never heard of anything like that” and then proceed to test my husband’s perfectly normal hormone levels for male menopause.
About four years ago I was diagnosed as a pre-diabetic. I had suffered three very severe hypoglycemic episodes where I collapsed with a blood sugar of 30. One thing I noticed during all of these upsetting episodes was that my entire body would be covered with a glistening layer of sweat, not a light glow but a soaking sweat! It didn’t take much for me to put two and two together to come to the conclusion that my husband had also been suffering from extreme drops in his blood sugar while he slept. This made sense because his family on both sides had type II diabetes. However, during the day he had never had any symptoms so his diagnosis continued to go unnoticed.
I realized that his A1c was coming back normal because his sugar was high during the day and very low during the night and when averaged together appeared to be normal, which it was not. Finally, he was given a glucose tolerance test and two hours into the test his blood sugar dropped to 40 and he broke out in a familiar sweat reminiscent of his swimmingly soggy nights. At 60, 50 and even 45 glucose level he had no symptoms but at 40 he was drenched.
I had worked hard to figure out a diet to stabilize my own see-sawing blood sugar it was sugar free, low in carbohydrates and incorporated one important ingredient fiber in the form of flax, wheat bran and PGX. PGX is a product, which many believe to be the most powerful fiber in the world because it attracts water like crazy — 200 times its own weight and if taken before meals works like a charm to stabilize blood sugar…but thats for another post.
I decided to do an experiment, I purchased Citrucel and Benefiber and mixed them together and decided to give my husband a sugar-free, orange flavored, fiber cocktail before bed to see if it would work. Viola! on the first night the night sweats stopped dead in their tracks. For the first time in years he slept through the night without having to get up change his clothes and line his side of the bed with bath towels. Since that night, three years ago, he has only had about three incidents. Low blood sugar affects him only when he eats something with too much sugar, which he cannot metabolize properly and forces too much insulin into his blood stream causing his blood sugar to plunge and turn on the full-body water works.
We’ve mentioned this easy cure to our doctor’s and they still look at us with a blank stare. They reiterate their usual, “I’ve never heard of that!” Or, a surprised “Whatever works.” But mostly they dismiss our Citrucel cure as a psychosomatic remedy for a problem they don’t think even exists in the first place.
So nightly, when others are having their nightly hot cocoa, warm milk or adult beverages, Jerry and I share a lovely, orange flavored fiber cocktail that insures a dry, restful night. As we clink our glasses together in a cheerful toast we are reminded that this experience has proven once again that sometimes we’re our own best physicians and that natural, benign remedies can work to balance our bodies imbalances and bring health and wellness to us all.
